"Put something on, or we will be late for your ascendance," Minh said.

"They won't start without me," Xi grumbled. The quip sounded forced, but Minh meant well. So he squatted in front of his chest to dig out a fresh black tunic, smoothed it across his knees and froze staring at the black silk. Why did he wear black his entire life? Why had he succumbed to love only three days before having to set it aside for the sake of doing what was right?

"You do not have to be there, you know," Xi returned to the only outside topic they had broached in the safety of their short-lived slice of Heavens where they were young, and in love, and nothing but.

Minh's chin thrust forward, his only answer.

Xi suspected that deep down Minh believed that the ritual would fail. He might even believe they could hide out in the South together once the Empire fell. Whatever Minh's fantasy was, it softened his dark eyes with hope. Xi wished for him to dream his unknown dreams for as long as possible, so he kept silent, regretted it, and kept silent as they rode to the site.

The only hope Xi himself clang to was that ascension would preserve his memories intact. Then he could keep Minh safe in the upcoming battles, keep him safe forever.

Xi's horse trotted on, without his input. After all, they had come this way every day over the summer. If he wanted to, he could count down the steps left to him in Minh's company. He did not wish to, but he knew all too well the last curve in the road. After this bend, the sacred lake would come into view - and it did, inevitably. The bright blue flashed and expanded before his eyes filling him with sadness.

A pristine sight that Xi remembered from when he'd first laid his eyes on the lake was long gone. The workers trampled the shoreline into mud-pit by their boots and their boats still docked to one side. The construction waste piled up in a few waist-high dumps barely away from the Emperor's dais. The works had the rough-shod, frantic feel to them, particularly the nightmarish structure that rose from the exact middle of the bespoiled water body.

"It looks like a snare," Minh whispered taking Xi's hand.

Xi squeezed Minh's fingers, could not resist bringing them to his lips. "It is going to work."

He realized how feebly it sounded when the Radiant Forge amounted to a rickety tangle of ceramic and metal pipes, and glass coils connected to a metal frame two hundred yards offshore.

No wonder suspicion creased his lover's brow. "Why is it in the middle of the lake, heart?"

"Once the energies converge on the ascendant---"

"On you!" Minh snapped.

"On me," Xi kissed his fingers again. "Once it happens, the heat would be enormous. On dry land, it would have baked dirt to a significant depth and the lateral extent would have been even harder to calculate. Lakewater flowing through these pipes over there, and---"

Minh maneuvered Warlock to turn their back on the Forge. He was awkward in the saddle, certainly not a natural, but nowhere near as bad as his tales led Xi to believe. "Maybe I don't want to kn--- Wait!"

Xi was still mumbling 'submerging' when his lover's horrified shriek and widening eyes made him whirl to see what had spooked Minh so.

"You didn't tell me anything about the human sacrifice..." Minh's hoarse words trailed him as Xi raced towards a small crowd by the water's edge.

"No! Sayewa! Stop it! Mother!"

Fortunately, his mad dash froze his mother to the spot instead of galvanizing her into plunging the dagger into her chest.

He lunged for her sword hand, desperately squeezing her wrist, but his efforts were unnecessary. Tien Lyn's fingers uncurled of their own volition, letting the blade drop.

It impaled itself in the mud between them.

His mother looked him over, then let out a frustrated sigh in Sayewa's direction. "You did not tell him. I should have known!"

Minh materialized behind his back like a spirit, put a calming palm on his shoulder. "Breathe, heart, your lips are bloodless."

Tien Lyn gave Minh a curious glance, followed by a pitying glance while Xi took in a shuddering breath in place of introducing his lover. It just did not feel like the right time, and he felt like scrubbed his vocal cords raw by running and shouting.

The faery divided her eyes between the three of them. "It was your choice to make, Tien Lyn, not his."

"Ascension transforms a life, not just takes a life."

"The female bloodline," Xi whispered painfully. Minh's worries were groundless - he tasted tangy blood in his mouth from a cut his teeth made in his lip."This was the small detail you told me not to worry about, Serene Mother. Now I know, and I forbid it!"

Now Tien Lyn scoffed at him. "I am offering my life for the Empire the same way you do, Son."

The blue lake rippled behind her under a sudden gust of wind.

"No." Xi drilled a hole in the ground with the toe of his shoe and started on the second one. "No. Just me should be enough."

"It is an assurance, a catalyst. We need it to be sure that the dragon is viable," said Sayewa.

"Is that what you told my mother?" She would bleed herself for him, he did not doubt that. She was his mother.

"I told her the truth I learned."

He did not want to hear that they were all going to die within a year or a decade. His knees started to give out, and if it weren't for Minh's chest at his back and a steadying hand on his forearm, he'd have sat down into the mud. Thus fortified, he gave up on arguing the dragon lore with the faery, and tried to stare his mother into submission.

Instead of challenging, her eyes turned soft. "I have little left to live for, Xi."

I wish Yu was alive, he thought desperately. "Do you think I can just step over your dead body and go ahead with the ritual?"

Her lips parted, but she said nothing, darting a pleading glance at Minh from all people. Minh shifted from foot to foot behind his back.

The new voice laden with habitual use of power broke their stalemate.

"I forbid it."

The Dowager Empress wearing the heavy robes of her office towered over them, despite her small stature. The courtiers hurried to catch up to her, slipping in the mud, tripping on the sand and construction garbage.

The only ones who kept up were Rustam Bei and the Emperor carried by his first knight, Deserving Du. How she moved so fast in her massive black-and-scarlet armour was a mystery to Xi.

The Ageless Empress pulled the blade from its dirt sheath and tested it on her finger. It drew a thin line of crimson across her thumb.

"The elevation of our family is my dream, not yours," she scolded her daughter haughtily. "If we are destined to start the dynasty of dragons, I should be at its root. Besides..."

It was not like her to trail off, or look defeated, but she did. It was not like her to speak softly, but she did. It was not like her to look at him for absolution, but she did.

"Emperor Hsuanji's spectre torments me night and day, Xi. I waited too long to let my ashes mix with his father's."

They had never talked about this day, but somehow she knew that he knew why the Emperor followed him to the portal. Something in the darkness around her eyes hinted that maybe he did not get all the pieces of the puzzle from Jiang and Zijun, that there were more and darker secrets. Through the exquisite face paints, through the layers of silk and jewelry, Xi saw that his grandmother was a ghost painted to conceal her exhaustion of life.

Tien Lyn opened her mouth to object.

The Ageless Empress turned away from her daughter and addressed herself to the courtiers and the faeries who surrounded them now.

"Emperor Hsuanji appeared to me in a spirit form. He told me that the Son of Heavens misses me by his side, and that the Celestials will send us the dragon once we are reunited in the Heavenly Realm.

The Dynasty of Wise Temperance will protect you forever through our offspring, the Ascendant."

Did I just get adopted by the Imperial family? Xi thought.

Resisting the Ageless Empress's will seemed pointless. It landed on Xi with an almost physical weight to it, bending his head in submission. Others murmured in awe. Even his mother went to her knees, grinding the cherry-coloured silks into dirt, mumbling, "It cannot be happening..."

Mother Sayewa started a hymn of Radiant Blessing and Gratitude, joined by the rest of the priestesses. To the sounds of faery's chorus, the Empress lifted the dagger to her breast and granted Xi the last august frown. "Scarlet scales if you could manage it, please."

The bones of her wrists looked fragile, but the Ageless Empress did not shame herself with a faulty strike. The dagger tip went through the silks, into the heart, extinguishing her before Sayewa caught the body, not letting it touch the muddy ground.

"Your family, you don't look like it, but you are made of--" Minh started in a shaking voice, and did not finish.

The young Emperor broke in tears, his grief stinging Xi with its sincerity. The looming First Knight knelt to drape scale-armoured arms around her sovereign, a similarly unpretentious gesture. Then Deserving Du uttered a word not uttered in the Son of Heavens' presence in a millennia or more, clawing for the pistol at her side, to toss it on the ground like a scorpion.

The pistol was taking on a life of its own, the crimson glow like a demon's qi.

The faeries never faltered in their song, every word ringing true.

Red vapour coalesced into a transparent likeness of the dead Emperor Hsuanji before funnelling itself down the pistol's dragon-maw shaped muzzle.

Sayewa motioned for two acolytes to take the Empress body from her and knelt in the mud --an oddly satisfying sight-- to offer the still glowing weapon to Deserving Du.

"The pistol Brother's Bequest no longer requires black power to fire. It will strike the spark with the qi of the one you aim it at, and as before it will always kill, so you still carry judgment with you. You are to guard the Son of Heavens on the battlefield as you had always done."

The knight accepted the pistol gingerly and hurried back to flank the Emperor.

To Xi's surprise, his mother took place on the Son of Heavens's other side.

"I dedicate Righteous Judgment and myself to the same cause."

"So be it," said the Emperor with gravity that belied his age.

The faery chorus went silent the moment the Son of Heavens opened his mouth to echo his words with an uplifting crescendo, before switching back to their dirge.

The acolytes lined the dirt with a thick blanket of flowers to lay out the Empress's body. More flowers shrouded her form. The breeze picked up the petals, white, dotted with blood like dew. The wind's capricious breath tossed its bounty into the sacred lake or scattered it over the crowd.

Xi noticed that a few courtiers swept away tears, or at least pretended to. He wished he had remembered how to cry.

"Do you think we can make do without a dragon now?" Minh whispered in Xi's ear. His voice was hoarse, fighting its way out of a throat constricted by hope.

My hopeful one.

Minh's hopes almost broke free, almost touched Xi's hsin with their multicoloured wings like butterflies.

Rustam Bei and Sayewa were watching them.

Xi patted his lover's hand wishing to imbue this one touch with all the gentleness they could have shared over the years and wouldn't.

"My time is now."

He did not announce it to the gathering, but as one, faery and human, they all looked at him.